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Fabricia, our famous 160 millionth avast! user registration from Brazil, is coming to Prague with her husband! We at AVAST Software are all excited about their visit and looking forward tohosting them here – especially since it turns out that we are inadvertently sponsoring their honeymoon.

I decided to ask them a few questions before the trip, just to see what their expectations were.

1. Have you ever won any valuable prize before?

Fabricia: No, neither Eder (new husband) nor I have ever been awarded with any prize whatsoever.

2. How does it feel to be the 160,000,000th avast user registration?

Receiving the email notification that we won a trip to Prague was initially a huge surprise. At the beginning, I thought it was a scam message. However, after confirming that it wasn’t spam, we were very happy… even euphoric. Especially since, as I just mentioned, it was the first time I actually won something and that the value of this award is outstanding. On top of that, we were planning to get married, so we agreed that this trip would be slightly postponed so it could be our honeymoon. We are sooooooo happy and looking forward to it.

3. What do you expect from the trip?

Our expectations are the best possible, and we are anxious to meet AVAST people. We’ve also heard that Prague is incredibly beautiful and we will have an opportunity to visit many interesting places. Read more…

A Brazilian is the 160 millionth registered user of avast! antivirus and has won a sweetheart trip to Prague for two.

In fact, it is such a sweet deal, it will be Fabricia’s honeymoon and she will come with her husband. It took so long to convince her that the offer of an expenses-paid trip for two to Prague was real – for someone who had just registered a copy of avast! Free Antivirus and to arrange the trip for her and her new husband – that AVAST has almost added another 20 million registered users in the meantime. We just hope it will be much easier to give away the next trip to Prague.

But, just the facts.

On May 27, Fabricia downloaded and registered a copy of avast! Free Antivirus for her home computer. That’s all. And she went on with her normal life with its facets of work (health sector), love (fiancée), and life together (planning a wedding). And she had absolutely no idea of the commotion that her simple registration would cause over 10,000 km away in the Czech Republic.

In Prague, Julia Szymanska, our AVAST Community Manager, had been getting ready for the registration counter to reach the 160 million mark. With around 100,000 registrations a day, these numbers change quickly. Thankfully, Fabricia had registered with a valid email address. But communication was not easy as there was no response to the first few emails. For starters, she does not speak English and then she thought the emails were spam.

While some of us were ready to give up, our Brazilian colleague in AVAST took over the task. Marcus Googled her email address and name to find her work address and then gave her a direct phone call. After several rounds of communication, he succeeded in convincing her that the AVAST offer was real and that she should really accept it. And when we learned that she would be soon be getting married, this put the expenses-paid trip into a new, very romantic perspective.

In two days, our newlyweds will arrive in Prague. For the two of them, we hope this will be the sweetheart trip they remember for the rest of their lives. And for the rest of the world, it should be a reminder that a free antivirus can be very good to its users AND please pay attention to your emails. After all, we are about ready to notify the 180 millionth user.

At AVAST, we not only provide you with free protection, we also reward you for registering it! No, no, we’re not crazy.

You help us immensely by recommending avast! Because of that, we don’t need to advertise, and so we want to reward you even more – e.g., Internet Security licenses, t-shirts, iPods, or a trip to Prague. (see the Winners Section at: http://www.avast.com/community )

And as we informed you several weeks ago, we celebrated our 160,000,000th registration of avast! Free Antivirus. The lucky person who won is Fabricia from Brazil. When she received an email to her native Brazil that she had won an all-inclusive trip to Prague for herself and a friend, she was of course skeptical, as junk mail scams with surprising winner announcements are so common these days. But since she had just registered her avast! Free Antivirus she was curious and asked her brother for his opinion. After a few phone calls and finding the announcement as well on avast.com, she knew it was legitimate.

Best of all, selecting the friend to accompany her was easy, as Fabricia had recently become engaged! So Fabricia’s trip to Prague – from being our 160 millionth user registration – will now also be her honeymoon.

The popular downloading site Softonic announced on Monday the winners of the Best 2010 Programs Award as voted for by Softonic visitors in Spanish, English, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Polish and Dutch.

… ladies and gentlemen, and the winners is: avast! Free Antivirus! Voted as the best security solution for Windows.

Softonic.com is the world’s second largest downloading site with probably the broadest geographical coverage and we are honored by the vote and our users’ confidence in the protection avast! Free Antivirus provides. A big thank you to all who voted for us.